No. SB 718
Filed under Environment & Water.
Water Management; Prohibiting counties and municipalities from adopting laws, regulations, rules, or policies relating to water quality or quantity, pollution control, pollutant discharge prevention or removal, or wetlands; preempting such regulation to the state; repealing a provision relating to land management review teams, etc.
Plain English Summary
AI-GENERATEDCounties and municipalities may no longer adopt any law, rule, or policy on water quality, water quantity, pollution control, pollutant discharge, or wetlands, including wetland delineation. Regulation of all of these is now exclusively reserved to the state.
A local government that violates this preemption faces a direct financial penalty: the state must withhold whatever state funds that county or municipality would otherwise receive.
Local governments keep the right to run their own water, wastewater, and stormwater systems, and interagency agreements with the state and water management districts are unaffected. A separate section repeals the law creating land management review teams.
AIA county or municipality may not adopt any law, regulation, rule, or policy on water quality, water quantity, pollution control, pollutant discharge prevention or removal, or wetlands, including delineation.
AIRegulation of water quality, water quantity, pollution control, pollutant discharge, and wetlands, including wetland delineation, belongs to the state alone; no local government may share or claim any part of that authority.
AIOnce the department decides a county or municipality has violated this preemption, it must notify the Chief Financial Officer, who is then required to withhold state funds from that local government.
AIThe preemption does not affect a county or municipality's authority to regulate and operate its own water system, wastewater system, or stormwater system.
AIRepeals the statute establishing land management review teams outright, eliminating that mechanism from Florida law; the bill does not describe a replacement process.